By Prof Colleen Aldous

The next test of global vaccine equity has already started, and this time we cannot say we were taken by surprise. Mpox, formerly known as monkeypox, is a viral infection related to smallpox that can cause fever, a characteristic rash and, in some cases, severe illness. At the end of August 2026, a permanent global stockpile of mpox vaccines was launched. It was expected to begin operating during September 2026 and is intended to allow countries confronting outbreaks to obtain vaccines rapidly rather than negotiating for doses after an emergency is already under way.

On the face of it, this sounds like a sensible piece of public-health administration. It may prove to be much more important. The stockpile provides an opportunity to find out whether global health has learnt one of the central lessons of recent epidemics. When medical products become scarce, principles of equity are much easier to proclaim before an emergency than to apply during one.

Mpox has certainly not disappeared. The World Health Organization reports that between January 2022 and 31 July 2026, 145 countries and territories recorded 190,683 laboratory-confirmed cases and 529 deaths. Approximately two-thirds of currently reported cases are occurring in Africa. Mpox can cause severe disease, particularly in young children and people whose immune systems are compromised.

South Africa is not removed from this picture. According to the National Institute for Communicable Diseases, eight cases had been reported in this country during 2026 by 28 August: six in the Western Cape and one each in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal. Four involved clade Ib virus and four clade IIb virus. South Africa began a targeted mpox vaccination programme in July 2025 in Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal and the Western Cape, where most cases have occurred.

These are not mRNA vaccines

One point is worth clarifying because the word “vaccine” now often immediately evokes the controversies surrounding COVID-19 vaccines. The principal mpox vaccines are not mRNA vaccines. MVA-BN, marketed under names including Jynneos, Imvanex and Imvamune, is based on Modified Vaccinia Ankara, an attenuated vaccinia virus related to the virus historically used for smallpox vaccination. It has been weakened so extensively that it cannot replicate in human cells. LC16m8 is another attenuated vaccinia-based vaccine. Unlike MVA-BN it can replicate to a limited extent and produces a characteristic local vaccination reaction. Both technologies arise from the long history of smallpox vaccination rather than the mRNA platform used for some COVID-19 vaccines.

The evidence is encouraging, although it should not be overstated. The WHO reports that current studies suggest that people receiving two doses of MVA-BN have about an 82% lower risk of developing mpox than unvaccinated people, while one dose is associated with about a 76% lower risk. These estimates come largely from observational evidence generated during outbreaks rather than from the sort of large placebo-controlled efficacy trials familiar from some other vaccines.

Safety surveillance is continuing. More than a million MVA-BN doses have been administered, and the WHO's vaccine-safety committee has reported a generally favourable safety profile, while acknowledging that information remains more limited in groups such as young children, pregnant women, immunocompromised people and populations outside Europe, North America and Australia. That is how vaccine evidence should be discussed. Neither as unquestionable certainty nor as evidence-free experimentation.

The WHO does not recommend indiscriminate mass mpox vaccination. Vaccination is targeted towards people at increased risk during outbreaks, including close contacts, people in areas with substantial transmission and healthcare or laboratory workers with occupational exposure. The more interesting question now is not simply whether these vaccines work. It is who gets them when there are not enough to meet every request.

Building the stockpile before the crisis

The new system is being financed by Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, and managed through the International Coordinating Group (ICG) on Vaccine Provision. The ICG is not a new organisation created for mpox. It has managed emergency vaccine stockpiles for diseases including cholera, yellow fever, meningitis and Ebola. Mpox becomes the fifth disease covered by this mechanism.

Any country experiencing an outbreak will be able to apply for vaccines. Countries eligible for Gavi support will receive the vaccines without charge and may also receive assistance with implementation. Wealthier countries will be able to obtain vaccines just as rapidly, with Gavi initially financing the doses, but they will subsequently have to reimburse their cost.

When a country applies, technical experts representing the WHO, UNICEF, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies will examine the epidemiological situation, the population proposed for vaccination, the strategy for delivering the vaccines and the number of doses requested. The intention is to reach an allocation decision within 48 hours.

This is a significant improvement on trying to design an allocation mechanism after countries have already begun competing for scarce supplies. But the real test lies ahead. The precise size and composition of the mpox stockpile have not yet been announced. And that is important to know.

Equity is relatively easy when there is enough vaccine for everybody who needs it. Allocation becomes ethically difficult when several countries face significant outbreaks simultaneously and available supply cannot satisfy them all. Imagine that one country has the largest number of cases, another has rapidly accelerating transmission, and a third has fewer cases but a large population particularly vulnerable to severe disease. Which should receive the doses first? Or suppose one country can distribute 100,000 doses within days while another has a much weaker health system and will require substantially more logistical support. Should preparedness determine priority?

There is a defensible argument that scarce vaccines should go where they can be deployed rapidly and prevent the most infections. But there is an equally important danger. If “readiness” becomes too powerful an allocation criterion, countries with the weakest health systems may repeatedly find themselves at the back of the queue precisely because their health systems are weak. Efficiency and equity are not always the same thing.

Africa has heard promises about vaccine equity before

This question has particular resonance for Africa. The continent currently carries most of the reported mpox burden. Most of the vaccine manufacturing capacity required to respond lies elsewhere. During the 2024 mpox emergency, an ad hoc Access and Allocation Mechanism had to be created to distribute vaccines. International partners purchased or donated millions of doses, and vaccines began reaching affected African countries. Gavi acknowledges that the earlier global experience demonstrated the need for a more predictable system in which access did not depend primarily on a country's purchasing power.

Creating a permanent stockpile in advance is therefore progress. But a global stockpile should not become a substitute for strengthening African capacity. Africa still needs better diagnostic capacity, surveillance, clinical services, regional procurement and vaccine manufacturing. A continent that continually depends on an international body to release emergency supplies remains vulnerable even when that body behaves impeccably.

The same principle applies within countries. Vaccines sitting in an international warehouse do not control outbreaks. They must arrive quickly, reach the populations at highest risk, be accepted by communities and be incorporated into surveillance, diagnosis, contact tracing and clinical care. Vaccination is one component of mpox control, not the whole response.

The real test comes when supply is tight

The new stockpile deserves cautious support. It is better to secure vaccines before an epidemic escalates than to scramble for donations afterwards. It is better to have publicly defined mechanisms for allocation than to allow purchasing power alone to determine who receives scarce medical products. The establishment of a mechanism is not proof that equitable allocation has been achieved though.

When the first substantial competing requests arrive, we should watch closely. Which countries apply? How many doses do they request? How many do they receive? What criteria determine the decision? How long does delivery take? Are populations at highest risk actually vaccinated? And when requests exceed supply, who goes without? Those data should be public.

Transparency is essential because equitable allocation is not simply a technical exercise performed by experts. Decisions about scarce lifesaving resources inevitably contain value judgements about whose need is greatest and where intervention is likely to achieve the greatest benefit. COVID-19 showed how quickly declarations of international solidarity can weaken when countries fear that their own populations may go without.

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Mpox gives the global health system another opportunity. This time the mechanism is being built before the emergency reaches its worst point. The vaccines already exist. The organisations responsible for allocating them are known. The rules are being established in advance. This is progress. But vaccine equity will not be demonstrated by the existence of a stockpile. It will be demonstrated by what happens when there are not enough doses for everyone who needs them.

*Prof Colleen Aldous, Professor and Health Care Researcher

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By Myles Illidge

The Parliamentary Monitoring Group (PMG) will take custodianship of ParliMeter, a platform that allows the public to track meeting attendance, bills, committee meetings, and other actions in Parliament.

The Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (OUTA), which helped build the platform with PMG and OpenUp, said the civic technology platform was designed for civil society, journalists, and researchers.

“ParliMeter allows the public to track MP attendance, bills, committee meetings, questions to Ministers, and parliamentary recommendations,” OUTA said.

It said the platform was developed to make South Africa’s parliamentary processes more transparent, accessible, and easier to navigate.

PMG takes custodianship following the conclusion of the European Union co-funded phase of the project.

“ParliMeter was developed through the Enhancing Accountability and Transparency Project, co-funded by the European Union and implemented by OUTA, PMG, and OpenUp,” OUTA said.

OUTA’s Parliamentary engagement and research manager, Rachel Fischer, said ParliMeter brings Parliamentary information together in an accessible format. It allows users to track the following:

• Attendance of Members of Parliament

• Progression of bills through Parliament

• Committee meetings

• Questions to Ministers and their responses

• Parliamentary recommendations

• Parliament’s performance against its indicators

“ParliMeter was built to make Parliament easier for people to follow and understand. The next phase is about building on what we have created and making the platform even more useful,” Fischer said.

PMG executive director Rashaad Alli said his organisation was well-positioned to move ParliMeter forward.

“We have spent years documenting Parliament, making its work accessible, and understanding how it operates in practice,” he said.

“ParliMeter is a natural extension of that work. It gives us another way to strengthen public access to Parliament and help citizens and civil society.”

OUTA said that, under PMG’s custodianship, there is an opportunity to improve ParliMeter’s data and functionality and explore new features.

“Its future should be shaped by the people who use it. CSOs, journalists, researchers, policymakers, Parliamentary stakeholders, and members of the public are encouraged to use ParliMeter,” OUTA said.

ParliMeter in 2025

ParliMeter celebrated its first birthday in March 2026 and published key statistics from its first year of operation.

Between March 2025 and 1 January 2026, ParliMeter recorded 1,142 Parliamentary meetings, which had an average length of 3 hours and 53 minutes.

It recorded an average of 48 meetings per Member of Parliament (MP) and a meeting attendance figure of 79% during the period.

In South Africa’s proportional representation system, parties with more votes are assigned more seats in Parliament, leaving large parties like the ANC with many MPs and smaller parties with just 1 or 2.

“Smaller parties have fewer members to be distributed, hence they need to prioritise committees where they feel they can achieve the most impact,” Fischer said.

The 5 parties with the lowest rates of meeting attendance in 2025 each had only 1 or 2 members represented in Parliament.

ParliMeter said this illustrated how a lack of members in the National Assembly can lead to diminished opportunities to participate.

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Of the 5 parties with the most MPs, the DA achieved the highest meeting attendance at 84%, followed by the ANC at 80% and the EFF at 79%. MK and IFP achieved 78% and 67% attendance.

These parties have a total of 355 MPs in the National Assembly combined. The ANC holds the lion’s share with 161 MPs, followed by the DA with 88, MK with 51, EFF with 38, and IFP with 17.

ParliMeter also tracked the submission of Parliamentary questions and provided insights on the MPs who asked the most questions in 2025, as well as the Portfolio Committees that held the most meetings.

The Standing Committee on Public Accounts (SCOPA) had the most meetings at 65, with a combined duration of 312 hours and 44 minutes.

The Standing Committee on Appropriations held 48 meetings totalling 133 hours and 51 minutes, and the Portfolio Committee on Communications held 46 meetings totalling 199 hours and 58 minutes.

This article was first published by MyBroadband and is republished with permission.

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By Ivo Vegter*

The once-great US of A is on a downward spiral, ruled by a megalomaniac who arrogantly exudes ignorance. I did tell you so.

My wife and I were drawing up a budget the other day. Poring over the dispiriting numbers – electricity and fuel through the roof, groceries at outrageous prices, a bunch of internet-related expenses – I had a brainwave worthy of an alumnus of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

“If we just stopped buying from all these places that never buy anything from us – petrol stations, supermarkets, doctors, Eskom – we would make thousands every month! Do they ever buy your art? Do they ever buy my writing? No! We are carrying these businesses! We’re being taken for a ride! It can’t go on like this!”

My wife was struck silent, as one would be by such a bold display of staggering genius. “I’m the best in the world at budgeting,” I told her. “Nobody knows budgets better than I do.”

So that’s decided, then. From next month, we’ll buy no electricity, no fuel, and no food, and we’ll be rich! See ya, losers!

Too stupid

This sounds like a parody, but it isn’t. It isn’t even funny, because it’s so stupid.

Yet this is exactly what the smartest man in the world, the God-Emperor of North America himself, Donald Trump, said on Wednesday: “Interest Rates in the United States should be 1%, or less, because we are the Best Credit in the World — BY FAR. Our Country is BOOMING with new Investment! If we stopped Trading with every country that we have a Deficit with, which is most of them, we would make, at least, 1.5 trillion Dollars a year. The word ‘Deficit’ is nothing more than a fancy word for LOSS. We are ‘carrying’ almost every country in the World, and that cannot go on any longer. LOWER THE INTEREST RATES FOR THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, AND FAST! President DONALD J. TRUMP”

Or, if you prefer to hear it from his own mouth, here he is taking questions from a reporter, appropriately posted by @Poeslawisalive: “[unclear] deficits? For instance, if we lose $50 billion a year with a country, and we say, ‘We’re not going to trade with you anymore,’ we don’t lose $50 billion. It’s very simple.”

This is a stunningly ignorant claim, and it has implications on so many levels.

First, there can be no doubt that Trump – despite reporting to the contrary back in the day – was never “first in his class” at Wharton. He apparently did graduate, though only with a bachelor’s degree and not the prestigious MBA for which the school is famous.

He made an impression on very few of his professors and classmates. Those that do, recall he was a lot more focused on the real estate business he inherited from his father than on actually studying. He told the world it was one of the hardest schools to get into (which is true of the MBA course, but not the undergraduate programme), but multiple of Trump’s family members have said that he got in because he paid someone to take his entrance exam, his father was a generous donor to the school, and his brother knew someone in the admissions office.

I don’t know whether any of that is true, other than that he was not anywhere near the top of his class. What I do know is that if he ever knew anything about economics, he has long since forgotten it. A trade deficit is not a difficult concept to understand, yet Trump not only keeps repeating his ignorant misunderstanding of the term (no, it is not a “loss”, to either party in the trade or their country), but he has based his entire economic policy on the claim that trade deficits constitute an economic emergency (they do not; they are not even a bad thing).

Explaining trade deficits

What Trump doesn’t know (or just lies about) is that running a trade deficit, as measured in dollars, means you’re running a surplus as measured in goods and services. For every dollar an American sends overseas, they get more than a dollar in value back. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t enter into the transaction in the first place.

Running a deficit means that the US buys more from other countries than other countries buy from it. And since money doesn’t buy happiness, but goods and services sure do, that means Americans – being richer than everyone else – are buying more of the stuff that makes them happy than anyone else in the world.

A normal person runs a trade deficit with everyone except their employer. A country runs a deficit with every country that is smaller or less productive than it is.

Being able to run a trade deficit is a sign of economic strength, not weakness, as I have written before, more than once. But hey, I didn’t graduate from Wharton, so why not hear it from Justin Wolfers, a professor of economics who actually wrote a textbook on the subject, explaining “what bilateral trade deficits are, so that you can better understand – and perhaps be infuriated by – the intellectual error that’s transforming our economy”.

Achieved very little

Unsurprisingly, Trump’s tariff wars have achieved very little by way of positive protection for the US economy, and have done a great deal of harm to the global economy and America’s position in the world.

The most recent symptom is Canada’s desire to form ties to the European Union, and the EU’s apparent willingness to admit it as an “associate member”. That isn’t a very smart move by Canada, but America’s one-time allies can hardly be blamed for seeking support from each other while the one-time leader of the free world descends into authoritarian isolationism.

It hasn’t done the US any good, either. Of course, tariffs are a tax on US importers – both firms and individuals ­– and not a tax on foreign exporters, as Trump likes to pretend. But the goal of the policy was to bring manufacturing jobs and investment back to the US. It has not done so.

Despite lofty “reshoring” investment commitments (comparable to the investment promises about which Cyril Ramaphosa routinely boasts), the tariffs coincided with a decline in domestic factory investment rather than a boom, and the headline surge in foreign direct investment is almost entirely acquisitions of existing American companies rather than new plant.

Construction spending on manufacturing facilities, which peaked in the third quarter of 2024, under Biden’s CHIPS Act and Inflation Reduction Act, has fallen 30% since Trump’s inauguration. US manufacturing employment has declined by about 75,000 jobs since January 2025.

The manufactured goods trade deficit actually widened by 5%. The overall trade deficit did decline, but that was driven largely by higher exports of gold, oil and natural gas, rather than by stronger manufacturing performance.

Almost all capital is going into power generation and AI data centres, both of which would have happened without tariffs, and neither of which does much for employment (though it does hold promise for productivity improvements).

Sycophants, not advisers

Second, that Trump is still repeating such a cringeworthily moronic claim is proof that he has surrounded himself not with advisers, but with sycophants.

Either nobody has the balls to take him aside and show him Professor Wolfers’s textbook, or nobody around him even knows that he is wrong.

What is scary is that both alternatives are equally plausible. That his cabinet and staff are spineless bootlickers is abundantly evident in the fact that they take every soundbite opportunity they get to stroke Trump’s ego and meekly defer to him.

And that his cabinet is questionably qualified is also true. The Trump administration is “riddled with unqualified leaders”, argues the left-leaning Center for Economic and Policy Research. Jeffrey Sachs, distinguished professor at Columbia University says Trump’s cabinet contains only a single bachelor’s degree in engineering, while China’s cabinet is loaded with science and research PhDs.

Not that there aren’t degreed people at cabinet level; there are, but they’re mostly lawyers and political science types. Scott Bessent, the Treasury Secretary, for example, who strongly defends Trump’s unsound trade war policies, has financial trading experience at Soros Fund Management, but he has a degree in political science, not economics.

Once lauded for being among the Soros minions who broke the Bank of England, recent record-level Treasury bond yields have “humbled” Bessent, per the New Yorker.

The only Trump official with a bachelor’s degree in economics is Howard Lutnick at Commerce. (Jay Clayton, the recently appointed Director of National Intelligence has a Master’s in economics, but isn’t in an economics role.)

Sachs is technically wrong about the number of engineering degrees: Chris Wright, the energy secretary, has a bachelor’s in mechanical engineering, but Clayton has a bachelor’s in engineering too – though once again, he’s not in a relevant role.

The point is that Trump’s cabinet is not exactly brimming with economics experts or highly qualified technocrats who could call Trump out.

The typical response on the right to this observation is summarised by Andrew Mercer of the non-partisan news outlet Political.org: “Many Trump supporters enthusiastically back the appointment strategy, arguing that Washington insiders and career bureaucrats sabotaged the first term and that loyalty to the president’s mandate is itself a qualification. Right-leaning commentators frame the ‘deep state’ pushback as proof that Trump is finally dismantling entrenched institutional resistance. Some conservatives do quietly acknowledge concerns about specific nominees’ lack of agency expertise, but publicly rally around the broader disruption agenda.”

There’s a word for regimes where loyalty to a leader is itself a qualification.

It’s the economy, stupid

The third observation is that interest rates are – besides being set by a nominally independent central bank which should not be ordered around by a petulant president – are a signal of economic performance.

Trump says that the US is credit-worthy. Buyers of sovereign debt beg to differ. I also think I’m far more credit-worthy than my bank is willing to concede, and it’s the bank that decides.

Trump promised to cut the inflation he claims was caused by Joe Biden (but was actually caused by the global pandemic response). He didn’t. It went up.

His defenders will say it’s a temporary blip caused by higher fuel prices, but gasoline prices – up 27.4% year-on-year – accounted for only a third of the latest consumer price index increase. Food price inflation has also gone up, not down.

Speaking of gasoline prices, he promised to “cut energy prices in half within 12 months”, deliver “$2 a gallon”. “Mark it down, and you can get very angry at me if we don’t do it,” he told a rally in Indiana, Pennsylvania in August of 2024.

The average gasoline price at Trump’s second inauguration was $3.229. The most recent reported figure is $4.455. That is – how best to put it – not halved. And it’s set to get even worse, causing anger and protests around the world.

Payroll growth averaged 31,000 a month over the 12 months to August 2026, against gains in the 140,000–200,000 range in late 2024 and January 2025. August itself was more positive, but the labour participation rate has declined as long-term joblessness increased as a share of all unemployment, which rose only marginally.

The US economy is extraordinarily large and deep, and therefore very resilient to shocks, but even so, GDP growth has been sluggish, at less than half the long-term average of over 3%.

Consumer sentiment is in the toilet. Measured by the University of Michigan at 47.8, it was lower than the worst month post-Covid, exceeding only May 2026 in the last ten years. At Trump’s inauguration, it stood at 71.1 points, and during his first term, it averaged about 95.

Despite all the noise about DOGE – which cruelly cut poverty relief and health programmes such as PEPFAR in South Africa that keeps many HIV/Aids patients alive – there has hardly been a blip in federal spending, which continues to rise as if Biden were still in charge.

The federal budget deficit (the excess of spending over tax revenue) sits at $1.8 trillion for FY 2025. That was only marginally less than Biden’s final year in office, and more than in 2022 or 2023. The current financial year ends on 30 September, but so far, it already exceeds the deficit for the whole of FY 2025.

As a result, the federal debt continued its relentless march towards $40 trillion, roughly double what it was when Trump first set foot in the Oval Office in 2016.

For the record, he pledged at various times not to increase the national debt, to reducing a portion of it, and to paying all of it off by using tariff revenues that even with the most rosy forecasts and calm legal waters couldn’t have raised even a tenth of that amount.

Forever war

Then there’s the Iran war. Almost everything I wrote about it, six months ago, now seems prophetic. It has been very expensive for the US, and even more expensive for the world in terms of higher oil prices. It has achieved essentially nothing good: Iran is still ruled by an Ayatollah, presiding over a hand-picked Guardian Council, which imposes strict Islamist theocracy upon the Iranian parliament, executive government, judiciary and people. It still seeks to build nuclear weapons. It still swears to annihilate both the Great Satan (the US) and Little Satan (Israel). It still provides material support to proxy militias around the Middle East.

And despite the damage both Iran and its proxies have sustained, they are still capable of closing the Strait of Hormuz at will, holding the US and the world over a barrel in a way that they did not (or could not) before Trump shot from the hip in February, and might even be able to close the Bab al-Mandab Strait into the Red Sea, using Yemen’s Houthi militias.

And there is no sign that the war will come to any conclusion. Trump has ordered it ended. He has insisted that Iran stop messing about and admit defeat. He has demanded that other countries take over policing the Strait of Hormuz. He has thrown his toys and yelled his head off, but he has no cards. Iran holds all the cards. It alone can decide when this conflict ends, and for now, keeping the US occupied in the Middle East is good for Iran, and even better for its backers in China and Russia.

For someone who promised to end “forever wars”, he’s not doing a very good job. Perhaps that’s what you get when you put a looks-maxxing Fox News pundit in charge of the military.

Most corrupt ever

There’s the staggering corruption, that makes Jacob Zuma look like a rank amateur. Trump, his friends and his family have made billions off the presidency. And Trump has no shame: he is even offering early access to his Truth Social posts – the personally owned platform where he conducts much of his official executive business – to paying subscribers who want insider information before everyone else gets it.

If I listed all the corrupt and probably corrupt business involving Trump and his inner circle, I’d be here all week, and this piece wouldn’t get any shorter. So let’s hand the microphone to the pseudonymous intelligence analyst and investigative reporter behind The Leah Files, who constructed a rigorous model to assess exactly how corrupt US presidents and various historical world leaders have been.

Trump and his family made literal billions from personal and family ventures in which he is both a player, and, as president, referee. The self-dealing is on a scale that is hard to believe.

Leah’s report shows Trump leading the global pack as the worst leader ever by reported corruption alongside Teodoro Obiang, Mobuto Sese Seko, Suharto and Sani Abacha. By documented corruption, which limits the scoring to convictions, guilty pleas, court rulings, official findings, special counsel reports and sworn financial disclosures, Trump ranks alongside Viktor Yanukovych of Ukraine (remember the private zoo?) and the Tweed Ring of Tammany Hall, which ran New York for five years in the 19^th century.

Either way, he far outranks his own first term, as well as the second-most corrupt president on record, Richard M. Nixon.

Promises kept

He has kept some of his promises, and some of those are good things. Taking a chainsaw to environmental red tape and green technology nonsense was in many ways a good thing. Defunding education is less defensible, but he did say he was going to do it, and he did.

He made his 2017 tax cuts permanent, as he promised, though he replaced them with massive tariffs, and wasn’t able to cut government spending to account for the difference.

He said “drill, baby, drill”, which is great, and that has increased America’s energy exports.

He has kept his promise to pardon the January 6 insurrectionists, even if they were violent. He also pardoned a raft of other people: anyone he considered a friend, or whose family could raise a sufficient bribe, or who was convicted of crimes to which Trump himself is sympathetic, like fraud, got a get-out-of-jail-free card. He also secured sweeping tax and legal immunity for himself and his family, which remains valid even after he leaves office.

But mostly, he has kept his promise to use the institutions of state to go after the scapegoat groups against whom he whipped up his populist movement: immigrants, left-wingers, liberated women, and LGBTQ+ people.

Ignorance, avarice and hatred

We’re less than two years into Trump’s second term, and all of the worst fears about him have turned out to be realised.

I was told that my concerns, expressed back in 2024, were just a touch of the Trump Derangement Syndrome. I was right, however. He is a moron. He is an authoritarian fascist. He is narcissistic and cruel. He is greedy and corrupt. He has damaged crucial institutions that safeguard civil liberties, protect law and order, and guarantee freedom and property rights.He has harmed both America’s and the world economy.

The only derangement that remains is on the part of people who still, after all this, support him.

I get the anti-establishment appeal he had back in 2016. I thought him a crass and uncouth real estate salesman with odious tastes even then, but the prospect of seeing the cosy Washington establishment ripped asunder seemed exciting. Hillary Clinton was an awful candidate, and though Trump was too, I can see how he would have at least seemed the lesser of two evils (and perhaps a promising candidate) to people who oppose big government and like free markets.

His first term was not that bad, but his ignorance was on full display. And the movement that grew behind him grew increasingly toxic. It was openly hostile towards women, black people, and other minorities. Its entire worldview was based on white nationalism, religious fundamentalism, and hatred directed at out-groups. It was economically populist, in the same destructive way that the far left is economically naïve and dangerous.

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Libertarian optimists might still have thought he was just being bombastic, and if he actually delivered what he promised – less spending, lower taxes, less government, more freedom, and fewer wars – he would be better than any alternative.

None of those caveats and qualifications still hold true. He, and the people around him, have shown their true colours. He is nothing more than a malignant narcissist with more bombast than brains, who has never read a book (including the one he had ghostwritten for him), and who understands neither economics, nor constitutional democracy, nor the institutions of freedom, nor American exceptionalism, nor foreign policy, nor war.

He is a moron, and a dangerous, evil moron at that. Anyone who still supports him, even after having witnessed all of this, is not just wilfully blind, but must be equally ignorant, tolerant of corruption, sympathetic to hatred, or outright evil.

*Ivo Vegter is a freelance journalist, columnist and speaker who loves debunking myths and misconceptions, and addresses topics from the perspective of individual liberty and free markets.

This article was first published by Daily Friend and is republished with permission.

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By Cathy Buckle

Dear Family and Friends,

September in Zimbabwe, always known as the windy month, is now known as the smoky, hard to breathe month. As smoke engulfs us every day this September, the horizons are indistinct and lost in the grey haze of uncontrolled burning of what are called “self-apportioned plots” on the roadsides and in the grasslands.

Actively protecting the amazing diversity of species in Zimbabwe is crying out for the attention of our leaders. By Laws and Regulations are already in place but are exposed to the curse of corruption where every official seems to have a price. While Zimbabwe watches, our wetlands are being built on, in every town and every city. While Zimbabwe watches, a sea of litter lies on every road side, town and country, the shame of our nation. While Zimbabwe watches, the ongoing devastation caused by the mayhem of out-of-control gold mining for the past two and half decades is immense. Uprooted trees, pits, trenches, bare, exposed ground, disturbed water courses and mud filled, poisoned rivers and pools are everywhere. The impact of all this on countless species is immense. The food chain is interrupted: insects, lizards, frogs and fish are being decimated, food for birds is declining and the effect ripples up to other species. The annual frenzy of clearing and burning every scrap of ground and cutting trees is causing widespread habitat destruction and the use of pesticides and chemicals is causing secondary poisoning of birds from eating poisoned rodents.

Every day I watch the smoke-filled sky in my home area, looking for the Yellow-billed Kites. They used to be common here, intra African migrants, arriving in late July and August, announcing the arrival of summer. This late September I haven’t seen any here yet but memories of times past linger, fresh in my mind. Take a step back in time with me.

Every year from about mid-August the Kites returned and it was a daily highlight to see them circling and wheeling over the grasslands looking for insects. Using their tail for steering, rapid twisting and turning, it was impossible not to stop and watch, marveling at their incredible agility. Swooping down from a height to snatch up a grasshopper or locust, a rodent or lizard, the Yellow-billed Kites eat on the wing and on a hot summer day we would see them sunbathing, lying in the dust, wings outstretched. Burning the firebreaks around the farm always attracted the Yellow-billed Kites, diving into the flames for that one irresistible mouthful, hardly touching the ground, talons at the ready to snag their prey. Along the boundary fences on the tar roads the Yellow-billed Kites were always busy taking scraps from roadkill, cleaning up the casualties of passing vehicles.  

Out in the bush in the wilderness areas the Yellow Billed Kites are always a delight to watch, safe from the pesticides, tree cutting and habitat loss. They fly high to locate carcasses, circling again and again to see where the meat scraps are and how to get to them while avoiding the snapping teeth of hyenas and lions. Here the Kites compete with Vultures, jackals and other predators. You have to be quick to see them swoop in, pull off a piece of meat or pick up a dropped scrap and then lift up again. Sometimes they just sit on an exposed branch and watch and wait for exactly the right moment. It is then that you get a chance to see their bright yellow legs, black talons and sharp curved yellow beaks.  

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This September as I watch and wait for the Yellow-billed Kites I can but hope that they will be back in my home area again next year.

There is no charge for this Letter From Zimbabwe but if you would like to donate, please visit my website.

Until next time, thanks for reading this Letter From Zimbabwe now in its 26th year, and my books about life in Zimbabwe, a country in waiting.

Ndini shamwari yenyu (I am your friend)

Love Cathy 18 September 2026.

Copyright © Cathy Buckle  https://cathybuckle.co.zw/ 

My new annual Photobook, “Zimbabwe’s Timeless Beauty The 2026 Collection” and my Beautiful Zimbabwe 2027 Calendar are both now available from https://cathybuckle.co.zw/  or  https://www.lulu.com/spotlight/cathybuckle2018

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By Dirk Hartford

Not to long ago, still tipsy on RainbowNation KoolAid, one could be forgiven for imagining that SA’s non-racial democracy was still a shining example of DEI to a rapidly polarising white western world. 

After all South Africa, container of the origin story of humans on the planet, and arguably the most diverse population in the world, had not only emerged from a brutal divided aparthate past but had delivered a united non-racial democratic country.

In the only place outside the Western world with a sizeable white population nogal. 

But after the tipping point June 30 moment, and the genie unleashed by the March on March movement, South Africa has changed qualitatively from what it has been before.

The dialectic is unrelenting. Bit by bit, quantitively, over 3 decades of maladministration, the illusory rainbow’s light has been extinguished.

Now black African and Asian “illegal foreigners” are conjured up as the cause of all the suffering bought on by the dimming of the rainbow light.

SA is now perceived as a polarised, even hateful, dark and unsafe place. Especially if you are poor.

Where women are raped and slaughtered, alcohol and drugs are ubiquitous, crime and murder is rampant, humans and body parts are smuggled, foreigners are othered, outed and murdered.

The centrifugal forces at play in SA now are anathema to unity in diversity, non-racialism and democracy itself. 

They are forces characterised by desperation, fear and vengeful projections. One only has to spend a few hours in the SA social media mosh pit around xenophobia to feel it. 

Here be dragons South Africans. We have turned not only against foreigners but against each other. 500 plus registered political parties are an expression of this.

The ANC’s national liberation movement itself has over the years birthed countless offshoots - the PAC, Cope, the EFF, MK, Mayibuye, the PA, Action SA, Rise Mzanzi and others. 

Even the Cosatu Congress, the one place where hope still resided, with people organised by class and not race, has succumbed to these factionalised forces.

To resort to outdated terms, the “left” is effectively emasculated and the “right” is a Hydra with faces ranging from Freedom Front Plus (Afrikaners) to MK (Zulu’s), Action SA, PA (Coloureds) and civic actors like  March and March and Afriforum.

March and March is significant, and has changed the game so much, because it is the first grassroots movement to have emerged in our democracy against the status quo with such resonance.

Every political party is adapting to it whether they like it or not and the issues its fighting around are such that they are being treated with kid gloves by all and sundry, including the media and the government.

The active, organised opposition to March and March is, well, activists mainly. Its the emasculated left. Its not visibly mass based. Everyone else is on hot coals on the issue.

A non-racial democratic South Africa was the liberatory vision of the ANC. Yet no one has been more responsible for destroying the conditions to make such a vision possible then the ANC itself. 

And with the breakdown of the Cosatu Congress last week the ANC and SACP effectively smashed the last possibility from the side of the liberatory forces for any kind of claw back to non-racial rainbowism .

The real miracle of South Africa's transition 32 years ago was the actual creation of a united non-racial democratic society -  at least so far as our lauded constitution goes. 

It was by no means a foregone conclusion and it still is not.

Apartheid, the Bantustans, ethnic (Zulu/Inkatha) nationalism, Afrikaner nationalism - all mitigated against such an outcome. 

The ANC, the standard-bearer of non-racial democracy, ensured it was realised.

The mass struggles in the 80s, spearheaded by the United Democratic Front and Cosatu, were a massive boost for the non-racial ideal and the ANC itself. All races were well represented in these organisations.

In retrospect, the apogee of the united non-racial democratic movement was then.

With the ANC coming to power one would have hoped that the inclusive energies unleashed in the 80s would be taken rapidly forward in a new democratic society, but they were not. 

The ANC systematically set out to look after its own interests which was money by any means necessary. For themselves alone.

The fortunate few struck BEE deals with white capitalists and became millionaires or even billionaires overnight. 

The rest took over the state (cadre deployment) and either stole, or paid themselves enough (out civil servants are amongst the highest paid in the world), to create a black middle class in quick succession.

That might have still been enough for the non-racial dream to hold if the socio-economic infrastructure on which the new society was being built was not systematically destroyed by the ANC in power itself.

The infrastructure of South Africa is in ruins and we all know it. The vast majority, the poor, are who really feels and suffers it. 

The rich have already used their common sense and money to create their own enclaves. They will survive, and even flourish, through whatever this catastrophe throws at them.

But the dirt poor vast majority, the over 90 percent of South Africans surviving primarily on the humiliating peanuts of state grants ?

If one needs an indicator of how ANC rule has destroyed the non-racial ideal, one only needs to look at South Africa today through the eyes of the coloured people. 

Whichever way one spins it, the coloured people represent most directly the original inhabitants of South Africa, and they are the group that has benefited the least from the changes of the last 32 years.

Despite playing a major role in the mass struggles that ended apartheid, the old adage "not white enough under apartheid and not black enough in a non-racial democracy" was soon tragically realised.

Unsurprisingly the sentiments expressed by the March and March movement have enjoyed significant support also in the coloured community. We all need someone to blame for our misery.

The fast growing PA and the National Coloured Congress would unlikely exist in the form they do today if this wasn’t the case. 

Likewise organisations like the DA, Freedom Front, Solidarity and the Cape Independance movement among white people

Or Inkatha and the overnight success MK party and March and March among Zulu people in particular.

There is no kind way to put this. March and March has revealed something similar to what is being revealed throughout the Western world and it's not pretty.

Fear and loathing of the other and of each other have reached unprecedented levels in South Africa and its being reflected in our politics.

The united non-racial ideal is cracking at the seams as the ANC goes down. Its not yet clear which way the amorphous nationalism of the rump of the ANC will turn.

The only possible inclusive current antidotes to this rupturing lie in the tradition of Sobukwe’s PAC, Biko’s Black Consciousness Movement and Winnie Mandela’s imagination which is represented mainly by the EFF today.

Pan Africanism. Or Africa for the Africans where African is defined by allegiance to the pan-African vision and not by race.

Or in the classical liberal tradition which has long roots in South Africa and is today represented by the main opposition party the DA.

The DA is constantly described as a “white party” when it is in fact far and away the most non-racial political organisation in the country. Only the ANC/SACP comes anywhere close.

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Of course the DA was gestated by whites and the liberal tradition it represents is European in its antecedents. It remains the primary go to home for white people.

But it has grown to the point where it its major star, white gogo Helen Zille, might soon be ruling as Mayor in the Johannesburg/Soweto heartland of the biggest economic metropole in Africa.

Whites are currently 7% of the population in South Africa; Coloureds 8%, Indians nearly 3%. In 40 years time at current trends whites will be about 2%

If Helen Zille’s triumphs for the DA in Johannesburg in November it will symbolically be the biggest and most significant event since the dawn of democracy.

And it might also offer the last chance non-racial democrats have of starting to turn the tide and keeping the conservative forces of separation, acrophobia and ethnic nationalism at bay.

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Listen here

In this edition of the NdB Sunday Show with Chris Steyn, Elections Analyst Wayne Sussman dissects the preparedness and likely outcome for South Africa’s top eight political parties ahead of the Local Government Elections in November. He predicts a “car crash” for President Cyril Ramaphosa’s ANC “going into the election knowing that there are a number of …municipalities and ANC heartlands which are either going to be lost or have to be sorted out by coalition”. He has good news for the DA: “I think they're well on track to being the most popular party when we tally the votes in the eight metropolitan areas after election day.” The party tipped for provincial power in KZN is former President Jacob Zuma’s MKP. “I think uMkhonto weSizwe are well on track to be the largest party.” Also listen to Sussman explain why the PA’s Gayton McKenzie “is very well positioned to be a winner in this election”; why ActionSA’s Herman Mashaba “is going to be the kingmaker” in Johannesburg; why it is likely to be a “difficult election” for Julius Malema’s EFF; why the Freedom Front Plus of Corne Mulder is “likely to grow somewhat in this election”; and why the IFP is not going into this election with the "confidence" with which it entered the previous one.

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Edited transcript of the interview

Chris Steyn (00:01.25)

Welcome to the NdB Sunday Show. With me, Chris Steyn, and elections analyst Wayne Sussman. Welcome, Wayne.

Wayne (00:10.18)

Chris, it's been a long time and it's great to speak to you and the listeners and viewers again.

Chris Steyn (00:15.116)

The viewers really miss you on the Electoral Roadshow now that there are no elections. So I'm grateful that you've made time to give them an update. The road to the Local Government Elections seems to be full of potholes, particularly for some parties. May we start with the African National Congress, please?

Wayne (00:35.716)

Thank you, Chris. And this is a critical election for Cyril Ramaphosa and the African National Congress. So you know that the last local government election was their worst ever performance in a local election, getting under 50% of the vote for the first time, getting 46% of the vote. 

This also takes place at a time when the 2024 elections had major consequences across Gauteng and KwaZuluNatal.

And the last few weeks have been utterly devastating for the African National Congress. I think the list debacle, and yes, it's only two municipalities where there were no candidates submitted at all. That was Port St. John's and Ngquza Hill. But I'm going to get back to it. The loss of the court case. I just think that...This really must hurt the morale of the rank and file volunteer of the African National Congress and hurt the morale of the candidates who are planning on running for many of these seats. 

So let's focus on those first two municipalities, Port St. John's and Ngquza Hill. These are places where the ANC would have had aspirations at the start of the year of winning 78 to 82 percent of the seats in those wards. These are…this is ANC heartland stuff in the OR Tambo district and now they're not going to be on the ballot. And I really have empathy for the ANC candidates there, for the ANC activists, for voters who want to vote for the ANC. But they stuffed up royally over here and they're going to pay the price. 

And then we go to municipalities like Walter Sisulu and Sondagsrivier Vallei. Again, these are areas…not as strong as those other two mentioned, but the ANC are simply not on the proportional representation list. 

They're essentially moving from municipalities where they're going to most likely rule outright to being forced at the very least to come back via coalition. Now they have to accommodate other political parties in the best case scenario. 

So all of a sudden, when we look at the map of the Eastern Cape in 2021, it was Kouga, which is run by the DA.

Wayne (02:58.188)

And for a short time, Nelson Mandela Bay was run by the DA. 

Now you're going into the election knowing that there are a number of other municipalities and ANC heartlands which are either going to be lost or have to be sorted out by coalition. 

Then we have to go to Mangaung. I mean, this is one of our eight metropolitan areas, Bloemfontein, the judicial capital of South Africa, the factory of rugby players in South Africa. And here again, the ANC, one of the safest metropolitan areas. If they are going to come back to power, it's going to be through a coalition because they're not on the proportional list. So this is totally…must be totally devastating. 

And then there was also the issue of the mayoral candidates. The ANC is correct. You do not need to announce the mayoral candidates. Not the way the system works. However, the ANC committed to announcing mayoral candidates and every other political party is doing it. So we see the lists come out and again in some instances the ANC is totally missing. But we start seeing it at top of the list and what is the delay?

So I think the ANC's campaign is off to a very poor start. Of course there are green shoots of hope, Limpopo, other parts of the Eastern Cape, many parts of the Northwest.

But right now, it looks like a car crash for the ANC. And as you've heard me say on the show many times, I always believe institutions or individuals can turn themselves around. But that turnaround plan needs to be implemented ASAP, because it's not long to go to election day.

Chris Steyn (04:45.602)

Mm, only a few weeks. Onto the Democratic Alliance then.

Wayne (04:51.226)

So in contrast to the ANC in Gauteng and Tshwane, I mean, Helen Zille's campaign for mayor started well over more than a year ago. And a lot of political candidates have missteps. She hasn't really had any missteps. Of course, a lot can go wrong in the last month. 

But as we've said on the show, as we started closing our by-election coverage, that Johannesburg is the most populous metropolitan area in the country. It's also where most of the media in South Africa is concentrated. If you do well in Johannesburg, it can have a ripple effect, certainly in other parts of Gauteng, but also nationally. And I think that has been going well for the DA. I also think in Tshwane, they've been running a very good campaign. And I see a very disciplined concerted effort across the country where the party is really focused and they have the opportunity to do well. 

But as we know from our by-election coverage, the same two things which we’ve been saying in the last few months hover around the DA. Their biggest threat remains the Patriotic Alliance. If the Patriotic Alliance is able to smash down parts of that Blue Wall and Mitchell's Plain and the Cape Flats, that is the worst case scenario for the DA right now. And then of course, the Freedom Front, which we're to get to later, which I think have run a very disciplined campaign and are hoping to attract some DA voters back to the Freedom Front. Those are the two big things which the DA would be concerned about right now. 

One of the things, and I should have spoken about the ANC, I'm just going to go back to them very quickly. When you look at by-election trends for the ANC in Soweto, it wasn’t like that in other parts of townships across Gauteng, it's not that. The votes aren’t flowing in one direction, they're flowing in multiple directions. So it becomes very hard to stop that. 

Similarly to the DA, yes, they're concerned about the PA, but there's the Cape Coloured Congress, there's Marius Fransman's party, there's Al Jamah. So they being attacked from all sides and they need to…

Wayne (07:11.574)

…also contend with that. 

I think the risk to the ANC is far greater than the DA. 

And then just, I wish to zoom in again on Cape Town. We've got to remember that the DA have now been in charge of Cape Town for 20 years. That's two decades. And around the world, when a party's been in control for a long time, fatigue starts setting in. Is this going to be the election when the leader of the DA, Geordin-Hill Lewis, the mayor of Cape Town, is running for re-election? Is this going to be the election when fatigue steps in? That could be difficult. 

But right now, I think the DA is certainly in a much stronger position than the ANC. I think they're well on track to being the most popular party when we tally the votes in the eight metropolitan areas after election day. I think they'll be the most popular urban party in South Africa. But they've got their own challenges, the Freedom Front and the PA.

Chris Steyn (08:06.68)

Talking about challenges. On to former President Jacob Zuma's MKP.

Wayne (08:13.69)

Correct. And I was totally stunned when they announced a total neophyte as their mayoral candidate in eThekwini. I had to Google this person and the person didn't have much of a profile. They have now changed, they've dismissed her and they've changed the mayoral candidate. There's a more serious mayoral candidate running to be mayor of eThekwini. 

Look, as we know from by-election discussions, uMkhonto weSizwe didn't continue the same trajectory from the 2024 election. There are some ups, often downs, but I think there are a few things which are working in their favour. I think the ANC has failed to recover in KwaZulu-Natal. I think the EFF has failed to recover. I think the IFP and the DA are not going to be popular in some of those very densely populated townships in eThekwinii. And I don't see any new kid on the block emerge. And in the absence of that, I think uMkhonto weSizwe are well on track to be the largest party. I  mean, there's some polls which suggest they're going to win over 50% of the vote. But I definitely think there's a good chance of them forming a government in eThekwini after this election which will be a landmark breakthrough for them. This will become their centre of where they'll want to showcase what they can do for residents or people. And that's a major metropolitan area. And indeed, they'll hope that's the case in other key municipalities across KZN, places like Msunduzi. 

Then I'm also going to be watching  uMkhonto weSizwe in parts of Gauteng, particularly Ekurhuleni, where you take areas like Vosloosrus and Katlehong. These replaced the townships which were so rock solid for the ANC and some of these wards are going to be competitive.  uMkhonto weSizwe  says we're going to make history by winning a ward in Ekurhuleni. I think they're certainly going to win a ward or two in Johannesburg and that is going to be a significant breakthrough.

And what I think, I think there are some things which are still a bit, a lot of things are unanswered but..

Wayne (10:34.072)

…we know that there was a lot of anti-migrant sentiment, which is linked to March and March. Now, I think the party, this was a lane where ActionSA and uMkhonto weSizwe were competing for ownership of that lane. I think  uMkhonto weSizwe are currently the dominant party in that lane. But I think the anti-migrant issue has been quiet over the last few weeks. Is this going to bubble up again before the elections? If it does, I think uMkhonto weSizwe will benefit the most. 

I also think one positive development is the Duduzane Zuma becoming the deputy president. I think unlike his sister Duduzilei, who I think was a one-person wrecking ball. Duduzani cares about his father's legacy. He's a business person. He's more pragmatic. And he'll, I think, be able to do a better job at preventing the party from its own internal wounds, creating its own internal wounds much better than a lot of the other people around Jacob Zuma. 

So I think uMkhonto weSizwe is where it could well grow. And that's something we need to look out for. 

And again, it's a game changer. Remember, they were not around in the last local elections. So after this election, it's not just going to be about their, I think it's 58 members of parliament in the National Assembly and the MPLs across most of the country, but it's also going to be about the hundreds of councils which are likely to be elected. Then the party has a real footprint to spread its message and try and make a difference in people's lives.

Chris Steyn (12:23.042)

What about the once formidable Economic Freedom Fighters?

Wayne (12:28.676)

Correct this. We said after the election that this was always going to be a difficult election for Julius Malema for a variety of reasons. One, populists have to be on the front foot. They declined in percentage. They went backwards in the last election, but they also fell from third place to fourth place. They're no longer...yapping at the DA and ANC's hills, they are now behind uMkhonto weSizwe in the queue.  Remember the growth of the EFF in the last local government election was principally because of the breakthroughs and because of Natal. There are going to be big losses because of Natal. 

There is, in places like the Eastern Cape, Western Cape, Northern Cape, that's where I see good opportunity for the EFF to make breakthroughs, particularly Buffalo City, which is a metropolitan area. Maybe Nelson Mandela Bay. But we saw them plateau in places like Polokwane, Johannesburg, Rustenburg in the last election. 

They are still the next best alternative to the ANC and many of the townships of those places. But how motivated are the EFF rank and file going to be? How strong is the bench around Julius Malema? Floyd Shivambu was the great organiser in the EFF. Mbuyiseni Ndlozi would be very good at articulating the party's message towards the media or on university campuses. Mzwanele Manyi was around there. A lot of those people are no longer around the scene. And it remains to be seen how strong those around him are to make sure that EFF challenges for the third place in this election. Right now, it looks like it's going to be a difficult election. But let's see what the polls and the momentum continues to say.

Chris Steyn (14:21.411)

I just want to circle back to KwaZulu-Natal and the Inkatha Freedom Party.

Wayne (14:28.152)

Yep, we're circling back and they are the fifth largest party in the country. And a reminder that before  uMkhonto weSizwe was formed, the IFP was the party which was destined for great things again in KwaZulul-Natal. We know in 1994 they governed outright and it was a downward trajectory for many years until Jacob Zuma exited the scene and they started showing signs of recovery.

In the wake of that, but still in the wake of that uMkhonto weSizwe, which flattened the ANC, decimated the EFF, totally blunted the DA's differential turnout advantage and eviscerated the National Freedom Party, the IFP put up their shield and grew in the last election. 

Now, Thami Ntuli is the IFP premier of KwaZulu-Natal. So he's the number one citizen in that province. The IFP is working firmly with the ANC and the DA. How's this, how's his leadership of the province going to be judged on election day? By-election trends suggest that the IFP are going to do well in this election, particularly in the more rural areas, less so in the urban areas, even though, by the way, they grew in eThekwini in 2024. But though we haven't had by-elections of KwaZulu-Natal for some time, I think there's a lot of momentum with uMkhonto weSizwegthere. 

If the IFP does not grow in this election, that is going to suggest that many of its supporters are not seeing Premier Ntuli and his government create the change they expected now that the IFP has the premier again.

“eNCA and Mark Data,.we have a poll in the field right now, which will be coming out in October and I look forward to unpacking that with you and the listeners when it comes out. 

The one mystery is eThekwini and the IFP, but I would say today compared to the last by-election, where they would have been very confident, I think they're less confident today.

Chris Steyn (16:45.356)

On to the Freedom Front Plus, please Wayne.

Wayne (16:49.306)

Yeah, so even though I love political events, I don't often get to them. And last week I did go to the Freedom Front Manifesto launch to do some media work there. And it was a fascinating event. It was a party which showed a lot of confidence. Corné Mulder used this line and I'm never good at remembering quotes, but I remember this one perfectly. He said, Pieter Groenewal roer van die binnekant en ek roer van die buitekant. Pieter Groenewald sits in the Government of National Unity and stirs the pot from the inside and I stir the pot from the outside. Roer die  pot. And it just shows that the Freedom Front believes that it is deriving benefit from sitting in the Government of National Unity. The Freedom Front is deriving benefit from Corne Mulder's new leadership.

Look, the Freedom Front are always in a stronger position 50, 40 days after an election than what happens just before the election. In most elections, not so much, not in 2019 and not in 2021. The DA was able to squeeze the Freedom Front, i.e. get some of their softer voters back to the DA. I think the DA is certainly concerned about the Freedom Front. The Freedom Front, their supporters I met were very motivated. And I definitely think that the Freedom Front can exhibit growth, might not be major growth, but they are likely to grow somewhat in this election.

Chris Steyn (18:29.236)

Mm and then the highly controversial Gayton McKenzie's Patriotic Alliance.

Wayne (18:35.876)

Well, I don't think he would consider himself highly controversial, but look, the by-election trend suggested this, that the Patriotic Alliance were achieving huge growth, stratospheric growth, across the Western Cape platteland, the Sara Baartman district of the Eastern Cape, and the Northern Cape. 

The million dollar question is, are they going to have breakthroughs in the city of Cape Town? Remember they've had one ward councillor in the city of Cape Town now and the reason why they have that ward councillor is because the DA did what the ANC did two weeks ago. There was an administrative blunder. So the DA wasn't on the ballot in that by-election. Are the PA going to hold on to that ward in Kensington and how is Gayton McKenzie going to fight the election on a national level? 

The PA, and we've said this on the show many times before, always answered the critics' challenges. When people question them, you can only fight a by-election in Eldorado Park and in Heidedal in Bloemfontein, you can't fight a by-election anywhere else, they went and won wards near Soweto, they went and won wards in places like Newclare, they started winning wards in the Western Cape, the Northern Cape, the Eastern Cape. They've answered all those critics. Then people said they can't fight more than two by-elections a day and they did that. And they said, OK, you can win a by-election in George, but you can't win a by-election in Paarl, Stellenbosch, Malmesbury or Mossel Bay, which is the DA Blue Wall. And they won by-elections in all of those places. 

The one unanswered question I want to remind people of this. In 2024, I expected the PA to grow everywhere. In Saldana Bay, their growth was very, very impressive. But in Beaufort West, where the PA governed, voters turned on them. So are they going to see a rise across the board or is it going to be a bit all over the place? 

Again, I think Gayton McKenzie is very well positioned to be a winner in this election. The question is how big? And that is a hard question to answer now. And the other question is, can he make huge breakthroughs in places like Cape Town and Nelson Mandela Bay and be the kingmaker there?

Chris Steyn (20:50.348)

And how does the future look for Mr Herman Mashaba's ActionSA?

Wayne (20:56.9)

Look, remember Action SA were the huge stars of the 2021 election. They only contested six municipalities of the 200-plus municipalities nationwide and won 2% of the vote. This was in the back of, and remember I said this about Helen Zille at the start, if you do well in Johannesburg, it can have very positive returns on your performance because it is the most populous city in the country. 44 seats in their debut election. The ActionSA got 28% of the vote in Protea, Glenn and Soweto severely hurting the ANC. And then in places like Glenn Vista in the south of Johannesburg, they got over 30% of the vote. 

We know that in 2024, they ran into some uphill, into major challenges and declined. But never, you couldn't write them off because we saw this, we discussed this week in week out in your show that in townships across Gauteng there were signs of recovery across 2025 and early 2026. 

Herman Mashaba is throwing everything but the kitchen sink at his mayoral race. Very active campaign on social media. He's done some very interesting things in the party, such as only putting one proportional, one PR candidate in each, in many of the municipalities they're contesting in. I can explain why a bit later. 

He's refusing to be on stage with Helen Zille and he's explaining it, which I don't know. I think he should just make that decision and not try to explain it because I don't think it comes across to all the voters. 

I think it will be hard for him to get the 44 seats, but I do think in a number of heartland municipalities, he can be a significant player. And I think right now he is going to be the kingmaker in Johannesburg.

The challenge for him and his party is to remain on message in the last few days. He's definitely holding on to some of that township support. I don't think his suburban support will stay with him. But if he comes out as the kingmaker in a number of municipalities, then he's a big part of the conversation and he would have made an impact in the selection. 

But again, Chris, and I'm just looking at the data…

Wayne (23:19.642)

It's about, well, the time's flying. It's about 45, 46 days to go. Don't know the exact, can't remember the exact date. A lot can happen. Which party's gonna grab the momentum? Which party's gonna trip over its own shoelaces?

It's a very, very exciting time. And, as we said, the DA have run a very strong campaign with Helen Zille and Johannesburg up until now. Is she gonna trip up? Is the ANC gonna just galvanize around each other, look each other in the eye and say, let's put the fighting aside, let's put the faction aside. If we don't come together, it's going to be a disastrous election day. And are they going to improve their fortunes? 

So much to play for, but that's the way I see it right now…

Chris Steyn (24:11.522)

Thank you. That was Elections SAanalyst Supremo Wayne Sussman on the Sunday Show, the NdB Sunday Show, with me, Chris Steyn. Thank you, Wayne.

Wayne (24:21.434)

Thank you.

Listen here

This interview was livestreamed on Conscious Caracal on 11 September 2026.

Find Ernst van Zyl's Conscious Caracal Podcast here.

Before BizNews, there was a bank job Alec Hogg quit within three years, a company called Moneyweb he built from a room above his garage and then lost control of, and a High Court letter that convinced him to start all over again rather than retire. In this conversation with Ernst van Zyl, Hogg walked through the full history: the SABC newsroom he ran the year Nelson Mandela was released, the corporate takeover that pushed his stake in his own company down to 18 percent, the year of gardening leave that turned into a second startup, and the decision to own almost all of BizNews himself this time. He also covered what BizNews has become since 2013: a newsroom that moved from Bryanston to Hermanus, a YouTube and podcast audience of around a million people a month, and two annual conferences that now sell out within weeks of opening.

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